June 25, 2013

Happy Literary Tidbit Tuesday! What is especially cool about this week is that our fabulous new Beowulf poster is being released as well – which means that we are of course going to have some great Beowulf tidbits for you to enjoy. So have fun learning some new facts and be sure to take time to read our blog about our recent Beowulf art print release!

The author of Beowulf is unknown; however, what we do know is that it was written some time before the 10th century A.D.

Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic found in British Literature!

Although written in Old English, the poem is actually set in Scandinavia and features a Scandinavian hero named, you guessed it, Beowulf.

Much like the hero amongst its pages, the original transcript underwent trial by fire. It suffered irreparable damage in a fire in 1731.

Now, if you now find yourself in the mood to read Beowulf for yourself, but don’t really look forward to attempting to understand all that Old English prose, here are some cool alternatives to helping you get to the bottom of the story:

The Education Portal Beowulf video gives you lots of inside info on how it was written, structure, and all the nerdy terms you’ll need to know in order to understand this poetry.

Of course YouTube features a ton of videos like this one which allow for deep analyzing of what Beowulf is all about!

And if you just want to skip straight to the point and enjoy this tale on the silver screen, you’ll definitely want to give the Beowulf film a go! There are certainly some accuracy issues here, but the main gist of the story still holds strong.

So have some fun with this piece of literature and enjoy your Tidbit Tuesday! :)